WashPost's Howard Kurtz: We decide what's "serious" debate
March 11, 2010 9:17 am ET by Eric Boehlert
The Post's media critic today in his column highlights Rep. Patrick Kennedy's recent rant against the "despicable" national press corps for paying more attention this week to the Massa saga than a Congressional debate about the Afghanistan war.
Here's the Kennedy clip. (He addresses the news media in the first 45 seconds):
Here is Kurtz's take [emphasis added]:
I enjoy a good anti-media rant as much as the next guy, but let's get real. This was a vote on a symbolic resolution, pushed by Dennis Kucinich, to pull all troops out of Afghanistan by year's end. It went down 356 to 65. The news business has devoted considerable resources to this war and many correspondents have risked their lives to cover it. The House did not conduct a serious debate yesterday on ending the war, and therefore it wasn't covered seriously.
First of all, Kennedy wasn't referring to overseas war coverage. He was talking about that fact that inside the Beltway the debate over the Afghanistan war --the policy story -- is being ignored. So Kurtz's reference to overseas correspondents risking their lives misses the point.
Second of all, as Kennedy noted in his tirade, only two reporters, he claimed, showed up to cover the Congressional debate. According to Kurtz that wasn't a big deal because the debate was not "serious." But how did journalists know that before they decided not to show up to cover the debate?
Contrary to Kurtz's suggestion that the lack of coverage reflected the non-serious nature of the debate, it appears that journalists were going to skip the debate no matter what the content turned out to be.
In other words, it was just a (liberal) Kucinich resolution.
Most of those resources were used to sell it.
Kurtz is right on the Kucinich resolution, it was strictly symbolic.
You miss the point that they had no way of knowing whether or not the resolution was symbolic before they decided whether or not to cover it, bruce1ace. It was proposed by a Democrat, and so it was ignored by the media, which is a right-leaning institution and has been since the 80s.
Zinn put it best, "There's a terrorist in your neighborhood, so bomb the neighborhood." That's about he war in Afghanistan. Terrorist in the country? Bomb the country and invade it! The only sensible thing to do, right? And by that reasoning, a congressman saying that we shouldn't be there at all and need to leave is doing something 'symbolic'.
The entire line of reasoning that Kurtz uses is barking mad. The entire line of reasoning you're using, which sums up to, 'Well, we've put a lot of time and money into illegally invading that country, and we sure wouldn't want our investments to go to waste, so we're going to stay there.' is beyond ludicrous.
That doesn't change the fact that his amendment should have gotten more attention than it got, and it shouldn't be dismissed as a non-serious debate!
Did you even read the MMFA article?
Kennedy wasn't referring to overseas war coverage. He was talking about that fact that inside the Beltway the debate over the Afghanistan war --the policy story -- is being ignored. So Kurtz's reference to overseas correspondents risking their lives misses the point.
Second of all, as Kennedy noted in his tirade, only two reporters, he claimed, showed up to cover the Congressional debate. According to Kurtz that wasn't a big deal because the debate was not "serious." But how did journalists know that before they decided not to show up to cover the debate?
Contrary to Kurtz's suggestion that the lack of coverage reflected the non-serious nature of the debate, it appears that journalists were going to skip the debate no matter what the content turned out to be.
In other words, it was just a (liberal) Kucinich resolution.
Link
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/11/AR2010031101195_Comments.html